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The bye week isn’t just for the players around the NFL. I certainly love that they get the week off from practice, go on mini R&R vacations and actually act like the normal human beings that they are, but the bye week’s for the fans too. Just think that you’ve spent every Sunday (and one Thursday) for the last two months getting overly worked up, stressed out and eating approximated 47 chicken wings. It’s not easy being a fan, let alone a fatalistic Eagles fan.
I had a nice bye week. I took a much needed breather from this perpetually up-and-down season. I readjusted my expectations from before the season started. Will the Eagles win the Super Bowl? Probably not. I was so hype before Week 1 (wasn’t everyone?), but my dreams of DeSean Jackson sprinting down the sideline in Miami in February on a fourth quarter punt return evaporated after less than two weeks. It’s fine. Every season isn’t going to be Super, but fans need to find silver linings and memorable moments to latch onto.
That’s where the Patriots come in.
Every Eagles fan hates the Patriots. I would suspect that many hate them more than any non-Dallas team in the league. It’s obviously not a real rivalry since no one in New England worries about the Eagles, but who cares? Beating the Patriots is an achievement. Whether it’s an ultimately meaningless game like in 2015 when Chip Kelly and the Birds knocked off the defending Super Bowl champions on the road or that life-altering victory back on February 4, 2018, I cherish every triumph the Eagles have over New England.
In the latest episode of From the Bleachers, I talk about taking the bye week off from football, how every game against the Patriots no matter the state of the Eagles franchise is important and how I hate their spoiled fan base. I have a lot of close friends who are from Massachusetts, a very common occurrence for anyone who attended college in the Northeast region of the country. Let’s have the Birds pull off a win as home underdogs (sound familiar?) so that we can blow our chowder-loving friends’ phones up with obnoxious texts.
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